Illustrator Work for Title Art

I went through several efforts to get my title artwork the way I wanted it to look.  I used Adobe Illustrator to do this work as Photoshop was not appropriate to the task.  I also had to ask several questions in order to get the program to give me the results I wanted, as this is the first time I have use Adobe Illustrator.  Below are images that reflect my progress.

 

 

The final image is the one used on the title page.